Infant and child vehicular safety seats have become widely available since legislation was passed in the United States making use of such safety seats mandatory in the automotive transportation of infants and small children. The tremendous demand for vehicular safety seats has resulted in continual refinements and improvements to initial designs. Once such improvement is the adoption of standardized seat sizing for enhanced modularity and portability of such seats for use in applications outside the automobile. For example, conventional infant vehicular safety seats typically are configured so as to be removably mountable to a base member that is secured in place in the respective vehicle via seat belts or other latch means, as well as to strollers and the like.
As a result, many presently-utilized vehicular safety seats incorporate a distinct base unit that is intended to remain securely positioned in the vehicle while the seat element may be selectively secured thereto. The seat element itself, therefore, may be utilized as a child carrying apparatus, and used alone or in combination with mating base structures such as a vehicular base unit, a stroller, a shopping cart, or the like. Such a feature adds significant utility to child safety seats.
Another feature that has been addressed in certain vehicular safety seat designs is that of a pivotable characteristic to the seat. In such a manner, the safety seat may be rotated while remaining in a secured relationship within the vehicle. The user may therefore load and unload the child from the safety seat in a more convenient fashion.
The rotatable vehicular safety seats proposed to date, however, comprise relatively complex assemblies that are expensive to manufacture. Typically, such assemblies require uniquely manufactured components to operate as designed. Moreover, such components fail to provide compatibility to conventional systems.
It is therefore a principle object of the present invention to provide a vehicular child safety seat mounting apparatus that enables rotational mounting of a conventional child safety seat thereto.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a rotatable child safety seat mounting apparatus that enables a conventional child safety seat to rotate along a plane parallel with its base while the seat is securely connected to the vehicle seats.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a rotatable vehicular child safety seat mounting apparatus that is compatible with conventional child safety seats.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a rotatable vehicular child safety seat mounting apparatus that is relatively inexpensive to manufacture.